Roots: A Communal Journal

* These songs echo throughout our home all year, but especially during this season. -- Josh Garrels |  O Day of Peace  &  Come to Him O day of peace that dimly shines through all our hopes, and prayers, and dreams Guide us to justice, truth, and love Delivered from our selfish schemes May the swords of hate fall from our hands Our hearts from envy find release Till by God's grace our warring world shall see Christ's promised reign of peace Then shall the wolf dwell with the lamb Nor shall the fierce devour the small As beats and cattle calmly graze a little child Shall lead them all Then enemies shall learn to love All creatures find their true according The hope of peace shall be fulfilled For all the earth shall know the Lord Come to Him with all of your heart Come and lay your burdens down For peace he came to give and joy shall be the crown And joy shall be the crown

Don't forget that To walk the sandy shores of the Kingdom To catch the dust scattered by the sandals of Christ Is to relinquish the dreams and the ads and the liturgies that teach Death Is to embrace the wisdom and the mysteries and the other who breathe Life Is to understand that God's good gifts are always Restless in the hands of the receiver until they are given away Again and again For those hands must be kept Open to receive to repent to listen to bow to forgive to bear a Cross We will never have to carry For how can we receive the Kingdom For how can we taste the Christ without first forgetting without first denying without first receiving without first befriending without first selling All that we have in great joy for that abandoned and overgrown lot down the block And so Christ's poverty is our lavish inheritance a Kingdom passed down to its enemies We steal what was never rightfully ours and we begin to understa...

As the darkness subsides I notice small things: Dust frosting a wooden table Prayers crinkled at the corners A guitar with excellent posture My dog, asleep despite everything I notice big things: Old friends emerging from shadows with blinding brilliance The sun grinning through the scrawl of winter branches This gargantuan world, always heaving with sorrow yet enjoying margaritas on Fridays Am I a small or big thing? Am I a pile of grapes in an olive bowl? Am I a sonic boom rippling through a city? Am I the last leaf, afraid to fall? These are the things I notice as the darkness subsides.

Zealously We endure  like the dining room candles burning at both ends of the day with all our hearts Sowing, reaping, working not for ourselves and yet for ourselves passionately, patiently, perseveringly, pursuing Idols we cannot believe Stories we cannot hear Dreams we cannot have Treasures we cannot hold We are left Smoldering like a weary candle Ashes to ashes, smoke rising  like that fire down the block Noteworthy, dangerous, tragic We are left Bruised like a river's reed Broken, deformed, chaff  tossed to and fro by the cold winds Desolated by desire But behold My Servant will proclaim justice in the streets will make peace where quarrels reign will not break the bruised reed will not quench the smoldering wick And in His Name We hold and have and hear and believe Zealously We participate in his death resurrecting even drinking from the servant's basin So that as he makes peace our strivings may cease

Across the street, the Bungalow with its burnt, proud brick, stubborn and red standing tough since the end of last summer has finally and inevitably begun to come Undone The shingled and slanted roof layered one too many times like grandmother's ice cream cake has, in spite of its patient protests finally relented to the hollering hinges that have born the weight of winter's snow The aluminum porch canopy Once the lookout tower  for many a snowball fort Now lies collapsed surrendered Scraping a forbidden trench into father's front lawn and abandoning its ally  the splintering bench that has refused to abandon its post  The dining room is exposed To say nothing of the family's den Each whistling their dismay past beams and joists bowed by long-winded pressure These rooms recall faint memories of dinner parties and movie nights like an old carousel projector playing itself Rain's condescension and Fire's temper have relentlessl...